Sunday will mark the 4 year anniversary of this blog. This is actually the first year I remembered it coming up, so instead breaking down last night’s 12-9 loss to the Royals, we’ll look back at the last 4 years.

In the beginning, I started this with 3 other authors. The term author is generous because we didn’t write very much. A typical post consisted of a link and a snarky comment. It didn’t take long for a couple of the authors to get bored and drop off. Russ had a little more fortitude and managed to stick around a couple of years.

So why did I start the site? I had discovered blogging earlier that year, and had been maintaining my personal (and now defunct) blog Zesty when I came across the site Baseball News which had links to various baseball blogs. Now 4 years ago, there weren’t that many (TwinsGeek and DuckSnorts to name a couple) and there certainly weren’t any Tigers blogs. As a fan and emerging blogger I saw a niche and started http://detroittigers.blogspot.com. Courtesy of the Way Back Machine, here is what the site looked like. I know, pretty awful huh?

In 2002 I moved the site off of Blogspot to a Comcast page. It stayed there briefly until I sprung for web hosting and a domain name. With the domain name came a redesign that has only changed minimally in subsequent years.

The first post was simply that new father Bobby Higginson was named AL Player of the Week. My first attempt at analysis and use of statistics came when I showed that Higginson’s 2000 season wasn’t all fueled by Juan Gonzalez’s presence in the lineup. Russ did some follow up work that improved on my methodology but didn’t really change the conclusions (although it weakened the argument). Unfortunately Russ never posted these findings.

My most prohpetic (and really only) moment came on April 5th 2002 when I wrote:

Of course on April 8th Garner and Smith were fired, Luis Pujols was named interim manager and Alan Trammell became the Tigers manager the following offseason. Unfortunately I think I was averaging about 12 hits a day (4 of them were me) and nobody really saw it. And I haven’t come close to being that accurate since.

But enough of that stuff, how about some statistics? Using David Pinto’s Day by Day Database, here is what the Tigers have accomplished since my first post:

General

Games:         645
Record:    239-406 (.371)
Runs Scored:  2685
Runs Allowed: 3394
Players:       125

Offense:

 BA:  .255
OBA:  .313
SLG:  .402
HRs:   608
RBI:  2547
BBs:  1728
SOs:  4261

Pitching:

ERA:  4.88
HRs:   717
BBs:  2011
SOs:  3434
CGs:    35
SVs:   126
SHO:     8

And how about some top 5’s?

So there are the stats, as unimpressive as they are. I’ve blogged through some dark times to be sure, but looking at it in the aggregate I’m really not sure why I’ve stuck around.

As for the immediate future, things are looking good. Readership is at an all time high. I’ve got several ideas and interviews that I hope to see through before the season ends.

In conclusion, I want to say thanks for reading in general, and thanks for indulging me in this anniversary post. I really appreciate all the emails and comments. As always, if you have ideas or suggestions, please let me know. I can’t guarantee I’ll do it, but I’m always looking for things to write about. Also, if you have anything you don’t like about the site, let me know. Again, I won’t guarantee I’ll change it but I will definitely give all ideas consideration. Thanks again.